Sugar High

All of Thursday's tasks were accomplished with no problem. So far, Friday is going well. This weekend may not be so bad after all.

The weather really helps. It's gorgeous here, sunny and 70°F. People are just nicer when the weather is like this. Even the toll collector seemed to be in good moods when I went zipping through the toll booth on the way to the airport this morning at 4:30. It wasn't even sunny and 70 then, but the weather yesterday and the promise of more of the same today was enough.

Funny conversation with GH when I got home from the airport at 5:00:

ME: "I love you, Goose."
GH: "No more talking. Sleep now."

He didn't remember it.

I'm on a total sugar high. I had my gestational diabetes test this morning, which involved drinking some absolutely horrible, cloying orange drink. The twins loved it. They were bouncing around like crazy on the u/s, and our boy gave us a serious money shot of his male bits. Heart rates look good, I've gained 35 pounds, and my blood pressure was only 110/70. Hooray! And my C-section has been scheduled for 22 June 06 at 10:00AM. Happy birthday, Twins. Hopefully I'll make it that long.

I'm having so much trouble concentrating on work due to the weather. I just want to go on a picnic. I'll get out for a walk at lunch, at least.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. I probably won't be back until Monday.

Hot in the City

It's an absolutely perfect day here, sunny and somewhere between 65 and 70°F. It's so nice to feel the arrival of spring.

Too bad it's 82°F in the office. Ugh. I think the heating/cooling system is having a hard time adjusting to the sudden change in outside temperature. All I want to do is take a nap. Productivity is at a low.

To help keep my sanity, I went to the grocery store next door to the office and bought two big boxes of popsicles for my department. It's a small thing, but it helps. I'm looking forward to leaving early for class--at least it will be cooler there.

Finished, Finally

I finally finished Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Didn't love it, but it wasn't the writing. I'll have to give Rushdie another try. While slogging through Haroun, I did manage to read another No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book, which never made it onto the list since technically I was also reading the Rushdie.

On to something totally different: Julie & Julia. Food and cooking, yummers. Will start that this afternoon while at chemo with the Goose.

Let the games begin!

The Weekend is nearly here. GH has chemo this afternoon and we've got nothing on the agenda for tonight because we need to rest up. Here's the schedule, from my perspective:

THURSDAY
Swim at the Y.
Go to work.
Go to Anatomy class.
Leave Anatomy class early to go to Parenting class.
Pick up my dad at the T station on the way home from Parenting class.
Collapse in bed.

FRIDAY
Take best friend to airport at insane early-morning time that cannot be mentioned in print.
Catch a few more Zs.
Go to OB appointment.
Go to work.
Pick up in-laws at airport.
Meet GH and my dad for dinner.
Drop in-laws off at hotel (YAY!)
Collapse in bed.

SATURDAY
Go with my dad to yard sale sponsored by the twin group that I belong to.
Drop Father off at home.
Rendez-vous with in-laws and GH.
Go buy baby furniture.
Do something . . . anything . . . relaxing . . . and quiet . . . for a few hours . . .
Group dinner.
Go to Boston Symphony with GH, letting Father and in-laws fend for themselves.
Collapse in bed.

SUNDAY
Drop in-laws off at airport.
Collapse in bed and stay there for most of the day.

All the running around and stuff will be fine. Tiring and probably somewhat annoying, but fine, for me. I worry about the toll it will take on GH, though. His parents are not good about respecting the fact that errands are exhausting for him. We'll see how things go.

I'm feeling pretty emotionally calm about the in-laws' arrival. The venting here and the advice I got from some other online friends helped. The fact that the in-laws are staying at a hotel is nice, too. And they're leaving relatively early on Sunday (noon flight). It should be OK.

I've been concentrating on being quiet this week, not doing much other than going to work, going home, and taking care of myself. I want to be rested for the weekend. I've been pretty successful. I've been eating healthy food, exercising, sleeping. I'm looking forward to seeing the twins on Friday. They have not been moving as much lately, which makes me a bit nervous. It's always reassuring to see them and know that all is well, from what we can see.

Will post as time permits.

Visitors

WARNING: This is a major brain dump.

This post ("Parents") really got me thinking about what next weekend has in store for me. There are so many forces at work: the dynamics of having visitors, the somewhat strained/tenuous/explosive relationship I have with my in-laws, the cross-cultural factors, GH's illness, the impending arrival of the twins.

I have so much to say about all this that I don't even know where to begin.

I guess the best place to start is to say that next weekend, both my dad and GH's parents will be in town visiting us, my dad from Oregon and GH's parents from Michigan. Their reasons for coming are very different. My retired dad visits us all the time with no specific agenda. He just hangs out, tags along for whatever we have planned, experiences our life with us, takes us out for nice meals, and does little things around the house for us. GH's parents come for relatively infrequent, brief visits that are very goal-oriented. The goal of this trip is to buy our baby furniture for the twins' room. (More on that later.)

They were not supposed to come at the same time. GH's parents bought their tickets at the last minute (as is their habit, even though they'd been planning on coming for AGES), and then for the wrong weekend. Our condo is not big enough for all those visitors, so we told them they could either change their tickets or stay at a hotel since my dad had booked his ticket well in advance and had "dibs" on our spare room.

So. They elected to come at the same time as my dad. It's a good weekend for them, and the marriage-of-the-two families idea is important to them.

But it creates many headaches for me. Due to some unfortunate experiences with in-law visits early in our married life, I get all bunched up for a few days before they come, worried about how their visit will be. The good news is twofold: (1) We learned a lot from those early visits and now have groundrules regarding their stays; (2) The visits always go better than I expect. What gets me all worked up is that I don't really like the rules. The rules are that they get free rein in our house while visiting, but I can get rid of/change anything I don't like once they leave.

It's all so complicated. I know that as a good daughter-in-law, I should be respectful of my in-laws' age and wisdom. I have no problems with this when I'm at their house. But when they're at our house, I get very upset when they redecorate (they have thrown away some of our artwork--literally taken it to the trash--because they thought it brought bad karma to our house) and criticize what we wear, eat, etc. I'm proud of our house, and so it GH. I know that they are well intentioned, and I also know that they show love through their criticism (they want us to be our best, so in their eyes, the criticism is a caring form of advice and love), but it's not what I'm used to and not what my fragile psyche needs.

Then there is the constant implication that I'm not doing enough to take care of GH. They hate the fact that we both work and really think we should both be home focusing 100% on fighting cancer by reading, researching, getting second (third, fourth, fifth . . .) opinions, preparing macrobiotic foods, etc. That's what they would do. That's not what GH and I--as a team--have decided to do. It's very difficult for his parents to accept that we are doing things differently than they would. They have said to GH that they don't think we take his illness seriously, an assertion that is very hurtful to me. I take nothing more seriously than the fact that GH is dying. What could be more serious than that? They accuse GH of taking "my" side and tell him that because of me, he no longer listens to them. They cannot accept the fact that it's not that I force-feed him this stuff, we talk about it and come to joint decisions that work for us as a couple.

To be fair, I can't imagine what it must be like to have a sick child. I only know what it's like to have a sick husband. And since GH got his diagnosis a mere three weeks after our wedding, we never had a chance to negotiate the difficult in-law transition without all the illness stuff getting in the way. We never had a chance to set our limits and boundaries as a couple before cancer threw us all into a major tailspin.

So next weekend it's baby furniture. GH's parents are insisting on buying us baby furniture. On one hand, that's very nice of them; clearly the twins will need a place to sleep, and I know they will buy us something lovely and extravagant that we would never buy for ourselves. On the other hand, they have never once (OK, there was one time, but really only once) asked us what we need. We could get a perfectly serviceable and perfectly acceptable hand-me-down crib from friends. The baby industry kind of freaks me out--I hate that all this stuff gets made and put into the world and barely used, so just on principle, I'd rather use hand-me-downs for furniture and have GH's parents help us out with things that can't be reused: diapers, childcare payments. But for them, the furniture is important and so I'm trying to just enjoy the fact that it will be beautiful.

Ultimately, a lot of my feelings are just selfish. GH's parents were the most important people in GH's life for years and years. I've only been lucky enough to hold that position for three years. In fact, 5 April 06 will mark the three-year anniversary of our first date. Because I know that GH and I are on borrowed time, I want to make the most of it, of us, and I resent having to share him. I resent anyone questioning how we spend our time together, handle his illness, decorate our home. I don't want to share him. I know I have to, but I don't like it. At all.

I know I haven't always been the daughter-in-law that they want me to be. How do I know this? They've told GH. I know they don't feel particularly welcome at our house. Again, they've told GH that. I feel a lot of guilt about that, but I also feel like with everything that's going on, I just can't give them what they need right now. GH supports me on this; he has his own issues with his parents. And my awesome sister- and brother-in-law have run a lot of interference for us. We've all just gotten into a bad place where the in-laws don't respect what GH and I need, and therefore I am not motivated to respect what they need. I can take care of me, GH and (soon), the babies. I do not have it in me to be emotionally supporting other people. I just don't.

The sad part is that we all have the same goal: we all want GH to get well, or at least feel as good as he possibly can given the circumstances. Our ways of accomplishing that are so, so different, though, that we have a hard time working together.

As I said, the visits always go better than I expected, but I do have to go through all of these emotions every time a visit comes around. Writing about it here has helped. Maybe I will be able to be a little more calm than usual leading up to next Friday.

No More BBQ for the Goose

We live near an amazing BBQ restaurant. Amazing. Oddly, our condo is about a mile from one of the two locations and our old apartment was about a mile from the other. It's always been a favorite spot for good, cheap, caloric dinners, and the mashed potatoes were a lifesaver during the morning sickness weeks of my pregnancy.

Since the morning sickness jones for potatoes has passed, I haven't had much interest in going there. Throughout my pregnancy, meat has not sounded particularly good to me, but it's all worked out well because GH has found the mere thought of BBQ nauseating for months on end. GI cancer will do that to a person. Oddly, though, last night we both had a hankering for the Blue Ribbon, so we had no choice but to give in.

It all worked out great for me. What I ate of my meal was awesome. Things did no go so well for poor GH. He lasted about 45 min at home after dinner before he lost it all, poor baby. I don't think we'll be eating there again for a long, long time. RIP, Blue Ribbon. We'll miss you.

(Aside: the title of this post refers to my husband; the G in the GH name stands for Goose.)

Hostess with the Mostest

Got some Hostess cupcakes. They were everything I hoped they would be and more. I could seriously eat about a dozen of them. Luckily I only bought a package of two, or I could really be getting myself into some trouble.

Where There's a Will . . .

GH and I were scheduled to attend Part I of "Make-a-Will" class last night. Making a will is something we need to do. It's good to have one if you have kids, for one thing, and if we don't do it before the twins get here, we won't get around to doing it for a long time. It's also good to do if you know that one of you has a terminal illness. So we found a community ed class that would get us a simple, serviceable will for the bargain-basement price of $155. Sweet.

I ended up going to class alone last night. When I got home from a doctor's appointment (more on that later), I found GH in bed with a low-grade fever and body aches. I think the aches are from his white cell shot and the fever is from a possible sinus infection. He felt crappy, and it was clear that he should not be going anywhere. So in ten minutes' time, I ate a quick dinner, made him a smoothie, cried the whole time, stuffed Kleenex in my purse, and ran out the door.

The class was fine. Very straightforward. We'd talked about all the people we wanted to name in the will should something happen to both of us, so I was even able to fill out my paperwork pretty completely.

What was hard was listening to the teacher and the other couples in class (six of them, all around my age) talk about dying and death and what-ifs. For the other students, the idea of dying was incredibly abstract, almost incomprehensible. Some people made joke-like comments about it, surely due to the fact that it's uncomfortable and difficult to contemplate. But everyone was able to talk about it in such a detached, clear-headed way.

For me, it was all to real. But no one in class knew that, and it's not like I was going to tell them as I was barely holding it together to begin with. Luckily it was only an hour and a half and then I got to race home to find GH feeling much better. And I did sit next to another Korean/Caucasian couple in class, which was interesting.

I hate to mix up death and birth, but it's worth mentioning that before class I saw the twins on ultrasound. The appointment involved a lot of waiting around. I hate late afternoon appointments for that very reason. But it was worth it because the doctor declared that the pregnancy was going "perfectly." Our girl weighs in at 1lb 10oz and our boy tips the scales at 1lb 11oz. I don't know how the doctor calculates that, but it sounds good to me. The babies were relatively active on ultrasound, but no punching this time. I could see little spines and little leg bones and hands and feet. So cute! In that ghostly ultrasound way.

Stupid Things People Say

I have a whole treasure trove of stupid things people say*, but I can't resist adding to the blog the one I got this weekend.

Setting: Brunch with a bunch of Peace Corps friends
Topic: Baby names (you can see where this is going)

Commenter: Have you chosen names for the twins yet?
Me: Yes, but we're keeping them secret until the babies are born.
Commenter: Oh, well, just don't name your girl [insert our chosen girl name here]. It's a terrible idea to name a girl [insert our chosen girl name here]. I've met a lot of those lately. She'll have the same name as every other girl on the playground. I wouldn't do that to her if I were you.

Um, thanks.

Mostly I can blow off what people tell me about baby names. Honestly, it's not anyone's choice but mine and GH's. But the truth is that I've been a little worried lately about the "trendy" factor of our girl name, so this woman's comment really hit me where it counts. Never mind that I've always loved this name (It's the name of a favorite author and children's story character. Also, French.) and wanted to use it for a long time, and as it would happen, it is getting popular now. Although according to the Social Security website, it's popularity is declining.

Grrr. I'm mad at her for making a dumb comment and annoyed with myself that I care. I think I will have to go drown my sorrows in a Hostess cupcake. I have had such a craving for those for about a week now. Talk about something I normally don't eat, but what's a girl to do?

*Disclaimer: People have said countless stupid but well intentioned things to me since GH got sick. I try to remember that comments like, "You're only given what you can handle" are intended to be helpful even when they're not. But that's for a different post.

Resentment

GH and I pride ourselves on having open lines of communication. I don't think the pride is misplaced. We work hard to communicate and we're not afraid to bring up tough stuff as needed. We work very hard not to keep score in that, "I took out the trash so you have to do the dishes" kind of way. We have a few chores that are designated his or hers, but mostly we share tasks depending on who is feeling well, who's tired, how much needs to get done, etc. It's a system that works well for us.

Most of the time.

But then there are the times that part of me does start to keep score. Because let's face it: GH is sick, he's often fatigued, he needs to rest, and when you get right down to it, I end up doing more around the house. This truly does not bother me most of the time. GH's health is very important to me and I want him to do everything he can to take care of his body. Resting is an important part of his self care.

Last night we got home from GH's chemo around 5:00. He had been complaining of fatigue all day, and he immediately set himself up on the couch to watch some TV, do some Sudoku, and relax. Fine--the man just had chemo, he deserves it. I did laundry, paid some bills, made dinner, packed our lunches, returned some phone calls, usual house stuff. We ate. I got him to help me hang some art in our bedroom, but it was like pulling teeth because he was so tired. I felt a little bad for pushing him and encouraged him to go to bed. He did not, but he's a grown-up so I'm not going to insist. I did some work for class. We both went to bed around 10:30. I read, he read. I slept around 10:35 (still can't make it through that Rushdie book!) I woke up at midnight to find him STILL READING.

OK, as I write this, I feel like it sounds crazy and whiny. But I got SO MAD when I saw him still reading at midnight. He's too tired to help me do anything around the house, but he's not too tired to read until late? Guess what? This will make him too tired to do anything helpful again tonight.

I kind of let him have it, and he felt bad. Then I couldn't sleep because I felt so conflicted on so many levels:

The Illness Level. The man has cancer. He needs to rest, plus I feel like he deserves to indulge his rather mild guilty pleasures (sci-fi shows on DVD, Sudoku, staying up late reading). And I am not sick, my energy level is good, and I do like to do things that are comforting and helpful to him.
The Gender Roles Level. Although we work hard not to fall into typical gender stereotypes about who cooks, who cleans, etc., it's hard to avoid. The illness factor contributes to this as since I do more stuff around the house, I take on that traditionally female role. But I feel like most of my girlfriends complain about this to some extent. Even if husbands/boyfriends/partners are willing to help out around the house (like GH, when he's feeling up to it), I get tired of having to ask. I just want him to DO, without being asked. I think this is a common male/female dynamic, and our situation can sometimes exacerbate it.
The Pregnancy Level. I may be feeling great right now, but I'm pregnant! I, too, would rather rest and relax than do all the housework and lunch packing and etc. I have hobbies and projects that I'd like to indulge in the shortening time before the babies get here, and without GH's help, I don't have much time to spare.
The "I Should Just Get Used to Doing It Myself Anyway" Level. GH's illness is terminal, barring a miracle. I often feel like I just need to suck all this stuff up and get used to doing it on my own because eventually I'm going to have to. I might as well just have it be part of my routine.

It's timely that this should all come to a head for me shortly after posting about asking for help. It does not take rocket science to determine that asking for help, from GH or others, is part of the solution to the problem here.

But it's also true that part of this problem just can't be fixed. I burst into tears the other night when I was packing our lunches because I just want things to be different. I want GH to be healthy. I want to have a "normal" life like most young couples. I want to be able to make plans and go out on weeknights if we feel like it and giggle about how funny it will be to be old together. I know everyone lives with uncertainty in their lives and that any one of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow, but I'm tired of the uncertainty be all up in my grill. Actually, it's not the UNcertainty that I'm tired of, it's the certainty--much as I want to deny it and much as I fervently hope that something changes--that what I've got right now isn't going to last.

Two Big Ones

Two big baby kicks this weekend:

1. GH had his head on my belly and got one right to the temple.
2. I actually saw one! I had my shirt up over my belly and the damn Sudoku book resting on the top edge, and first felt one big enough to cause the book to move. Then I looked down at my belly and saw the next one, a jab right near the top.

Very cool!

Helping

A friend of mine just called, a local friend who lives just a few minutes away from me and GH but who we rarely see due to all of our busy schedules. She'd just gotten caught up on e-mail and seen the update I posted to our Yahoo group about GH's nosebleed. She was worried about us and called to check in. It was so nice to hear from her. She's one of the most genuine, caring people I know, and she and GH have known each other for their entire lives. Their dads came over to the States from Korea together after med school, and their families navigated the difficult world of being first-generation immigrants together.

This friend offered to bring dinner over to GH and I tonight. I briefly felt guilty about accepting--we're doing fine this week--but then I reminded myself of something my dad says: you're doing someone a favor when you let them help you.

I've never liked accepting help from people. My mom--the adult child of two alcoholic parents--learned herself and then taught me well that help is for the weak. The world can be a difficult place, and a person needs to be able to get by on her own or she'll be eaten alive. Between that and being an only child, fending for myself is second nature. (As an aside, my mom loves to help and care for other people; she is one of the most generous people I've ever known. She just doesn't know how to take any of that help in return.)

I've worked hard over the years, through various channels that I'll surely someday write about, to learn how to allow people to help me. My dad has been an important part of that learning process for me. As my life has taken turns that have led me to situations that I truly can't manage on my own, I've tried to keep my dad's words in mind and let people do things for me and GH. I try to think about how I like to be able to do things for my friends, how I truly want to help them when I can and ease their burden. It only makes sense that they'd want to do the same for me.

It's hard not to let help make me feel like a failure, like I can't handle things. But I'm working on it. For tonight, I'm focusing on the fact that I won't have to cook dinner and that I'll get to see a friend. Seems like a pretty unbeatable deal.

Now that's what I call a weekend!

Ah, this weekend was so much better than last. We started things off with a nice movie date. We ended up seeing Mrs. Henderson Presents starting Judi Dench. It was just what we wanted: fairly light, good acting, a diversion rather than a thinking movie.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing regular weekend things, albeit with the special joy of having been robbed of such pleasures the weekend before. We had some friends over for dinner, we slept late and ate lazy breakfasts, we got some errands run. Among our errands, we finally got frames for some "art" that we want to hang on the big, blank wall in our bedroom . . . I'd read in some magazine about framing handmade/decorative paper, and we decided to go that route. It's inexpensive and can easily be changed. We framed a piece of paper that matches what covers our wedding guestbook, then got a couple of other pieces to compliment that. Hopefully we'll get those hung tonight. It was nice to do something for our place, for us.

The other noteworthy thing that happened over the weekend is that we both got totally addicted to Sudoku puzzles. We'd done a few here and there, but my mom sent us a big book of them and now we're officially hooked. We need to get another book because we're squabbling over whose turn it is to do a puzzle. It's taking me forever to get through the book I'm currently reading because I keep doing Sudoku instead! Also, I'm not really into my book. It's the first Rushdie I've read, and while I love his writing, the story itself is getting on my nerves. I need to go to my online library account and reserve the next book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. That's the kind of book I want to read right now.

Progress

I got home yesterday to find that GH had spent the day in a flurry of activity. Three-and-a-half days in bed had him feeling cooped up and fidget, so since he was feeling better, he went crazy. He did four loads of laundry, changed the sheets on our bed, did some consulting work, emptied the dishwasher, dealt with a bunch of recycling, and filed some mail. Wow.

Best of all, he also called some home daycares in our neighborhood, which has been on his to-do list for a while. About a month ago, I had found a state-approved list of all home daycares in our town and printed that out, then plotted the location of those homes in a map to find the ones closest to us. I figured that since I had no other way to narrow the options down, proximity was a good place to start. I then handed the list off to GH with the five closest options starred. Well, yesterday he called the first starred option on the list and who should he get but the woman who is the de facto coordinator for home daycare providers in our area! Nice coincidence. She was extremely helpful, praised GH for starting in on this endeavor so early, and was able to help him narrow down our list by letting him know things like, "Oh, she only takes three year olds and she retired last fall and she is only open three days a week" etc. etc. Awesome. She also gave him a heads-up about a few people who were just coming out of retirement and might have infant openings. We are planning to drop a nice card and a bottle of wine by this woman's house to say thank-you, especially since she said that getting into the home daycare system is all about making a good impression. OK, we'll start with her! We can do that. We are good at kissing up.

We're hopefully going to the movies tonight. Time for a mellow date night. We want to see something relatively light, but not total fluff. Maybe Pride and Prejudice? We'll see.

Happy weekend, everyone. May all your weekends be fun-filled and nosebleed-free!

He's back!

An afternoon of sleeping on his face seemed to be just what GH needed yesterday. Although he's certainly still tired and sore, he's also well-and-truly back to being himself. We laughed about dumb stuff, ate dinner together, took a romantic walk to Walgreens to buy Bacitracin, and he got to feel a big, bad baby kick, one of the hardest ones so far. It was a good evening, and I fell into bed at 9:30 exhausted by the emotions of it all. GH stayed up until all hours working Sudoku puzzles . . . I never should have told my mom to send him a book of those! He's home one more day then back to work tomorrow. He thought about going back today, but who wants to explain why you have a cotton ball shoved up your nose to special needs teens? Especially when their social group topic right now is puberty and the giggle factor is already at a peak.

Speaking of work, time for me to focus on that story rewrite. I'm researching fun facts about the US flag. What I have determined so far is that the flag is really not all that fun. Huh.

Out, Out Damn Tube!

Oh, happy day. The tube has been removed from GH's nose. My feared scenario of gushing blood was not realized, although there was a small amount of bleeding that the doctor deemed normal. GH does have to keep a Vaseline-coated cotton ball up his nose for a few days, but this is nothin' compared to the saline filled tube. A walk in the park, really.

The pressure from the tube did cause GH's nose to bruise fairly severely on the right side. Looks like he got punched in the face on the playground. So the discomfort is not entirely gone, but it is much lessened.

To celebrate, GH announced, "I am going to go home and sleep on my face all afternoon."

Now there's a glimpse of the guy who has been missing for the past three days. His return was not as immediate or complete as I had hoped, but he did reach out and hold my hand in the car, and he did give the babies an unsolicited pat, so I can see that he's in there, emerging slowly, and that's enough for me today.

OK, Week, let's get a move on.

T-1.5 hours until the rubber tube is removed from GH's nose. I fear that the ENT will take it out and it will just start gushing blood again, but hopefully that fear is unfounded. I can't wait to have some semblance of normal GH back. I miss talking to him. It hurts him to talk, so our conversations have been rather uninspired and one-sided.

I've had so much on my mind this week. First and foremost, taking care of GH. This has taken a lot of emotional energy. Throughout this whole cancer ordeal, he's been such a fighter. I've been amazed at his ability to pick himself up and go to work, endure awful treatments and their side effects, and be willing to try anything that might help. For some reason, this nosebleed and the ER have been different. His whole demeanor has changed. It's been scary and depressing to see him so listless and uncomfortable. He seems to have no will, no motivation. I think part of this is that he's been in constant pain at some level; even when the Oxycodone takes the pain itself away, the pressure of the tube is still uncomfortable enough to be troublesome. He's like a deflated balloon. He has barely asked about the babies, barely asked about *me*. I feel guilty for wanting that interest when he clearly needs to focus on himself, but I need a sign that he wants to feel better, wants to go on. I hope that getting this tube out brings back the GH I'm used to.

Then there's the cat. She seems to be doing OK and she has an appointment at the vet next Tuesday to meet her new doc, get her annual exam and shots, and get checked out for any lingering illness. Let's hope that's nothing serious.

Then there's effing work. Of course, this would be the week that I have a meeting nearly every day with The Evil One. This woman is one of those people who just seems to delight in making others feel bad. I really think she enjoys it. She likes to undermine people to make herself feel powerful, expose people's weaknesses to make herself feel strong, and make people feel stupid and incapable to validate her own accomplishments and intellect. She's a smart woman, but a bad person and a horrible manager (luckily not my direct boss). I thought I had a story basically finalized and ready to go to art yesterday, but she decided that she needed to see it before I met with the designer and BOOM, now I have to redo the whole things. "It's too hard for third grade." Bullshit, but she wields enough power that I just have to smile and nod and rewrite the thing. Argh.

At least I got a lot of sleep last night and had a relaxing evening yesterday. And I really, really hope that I get my GH back this morning.

T-1.25 hours.

I don't consider that a weekend.

I feel like I didn't get a weekend this weekend. Actually, I feel like I only got half a weekend. The first part was great: dinner with friends on both Friday and Saturday, and a nice girls' morning on Saturday AM. But when we got home from dinner on Saturday night, all hell broke loose.

We arrived home to find that our cat was very, very sick. Vomiting, diarrhea, you name it. She was listless and clearly feeling awful. I cleaned everything up and tried to console her, but she was basically inconsolable. I made her a comfy place to sleep, covered all favorite furniture with towels, gave her some love, and went to bed figuring that I'd take her to the veterinary ER in the morning if she was still suffering. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well, getting up twice to check on her.

The good news is that she seemed much better on Sunday morning. She was hungry and thirsty and pretty much back to her usual self. So I vowed to make her an appointment with her new vet for sometime this week, brewed myself a pot of tea, and settled in to enjoy a lazy Sunday.

Then GH got up. Uncontrollable bloody nose. He's prone to bloody noses, especially in the dry, dry days of winter, and usually he gets them under control fairly easily. Not this time. It was a faucet. Damn you, low platelets. After 10 minutes of trying to stop it, we gave up and headed to the ER. I had the foresight to put some cookies and a Nalgene bottle of water in my bag, but not the foresight to put in a book: BIG MISTAKE.

This time the good news was that the ER docs saw GH right away and were able to get the bleeding under control (although by the time we got there, checked in, got a room, etc. he'd been bleeding for about 45 minutes). The bad news is that to stop it, the doc put a rubber tube up GH's nose and filled it with saline to block the entire nasal cavity. Guess what: this is not very comfortable. At all. Poor GH can't breathe through either side of his nose and he's not allowed to lie down flat to sleep. Hooray.

It took about two hours for the blood test results to come back, and we had to wait in case GH needed a platelet transfusion. Again, some good news: platelets were around 50K, so no drop from the chemo. Yet. Once we got those results, we got to go home with instructions to leave the tube in place until a Wednesday follow-up appointment with an ENT.

So I'm at work today, GH is home trying to rest, although it's nearly impossible to get any real quality sleep with a tube of saline shoved up your nose. Anything to do with the face is uncomfortable: talking, eating, breathing. He's on painkillers, which help, but mostly he's just restless and uncomfortable. Until Wednesday. Chemo is off for this week, but we'll be back in on the 15th. The oncologist is concerned about this episode, though. One of GH's chemo drugs (Avastin) can cause bleeding, and that combined with low platelets and this incident . . . well, we'll just have to see.

It was actually kind of a relief when this morning rolled around. I was just ready for yesterday to be over. We got home from the ER around 12:30, hungry, tired, and grungy. We were both desperate for a shower, and I immediately washed all of the clothes we'd worn that morning--ERs are such germy hellholes.

On a more positive note, I've been feeling the babies move a lot, which is really cool. I had an ultrasound on Friday during which I saw the girl punch the boy in the head! Preview of coming attractions. The babies are each around 18cm long. Boy is transverse at the top of my belly, girl is breech on the lower left side. I think the girl pummeled the boy up into that top spot so that she'd have more room to herself. Pretty funny.

Back at It

Home at last from a long day. Work was busy this morning, then I headed to chemo with GH at 1:00. It was actually nice to see everyone--after a year and a half of this, we know all the nurses pretty well--and it was especially fun to show off the belly. Everyone there is so happy for us. They don't get a lot of baby news on the chemo ward, so it's a nice change of pace for them.

News from the doc was mixed to bad. GH's platelet count hovers around 50K, quite low, and actually lower than it was preradiation. The oncologist put him back on a regimen that was very successful for him for a long time (Gemzar + Avastin), but since the Gemzar caused the low platelets in the first place, it's unclear how long we'll be able to keep this up. The oncologist (who is seriously awesome and deserves a nickname, but I can't come up with a good one) says that she'll tolerate platelet counts as low as 25K, and treatments will be scheduled on a week-by-week basis as blood test results come in. At least we got some poison infused today. Let's hope it does its job and does it well.

The oncologist also mentioned the she received a mailing from the NIH re: a new antibody study being done on pancreatic cancer. They are recruiting patients now. Evidently being involved would mean a trip to DC, but she's going to call and find out what the criteria are, what other trials have been done using the antibodies, etc. We'll see. Could be the next big thing.

I think I'm done for the night. Sweet dreams, everyone.

Items Checked off the List Today

1. Called old vet to get a copy of our cat's records to take to her new vet.
2. Signed up for Make-A-Will class through adult ed. We are poster children for Those Who Need A Will.
3. Exchanged BSO tickets that fall on a night we have a "how to be parents" class.
4. Set up an "interview" appointment with a highly recommended pediatrician.

Not bad for 30 minutes' worth of morning phone calls. Next up: calling our insurance agent to talk about homeowners' insurance, which, six months after moving into our condo we shamefully still don't have. And start calling home daycares. It feels good to get things done.

Oh What a Night

About three weeks ago, GH and I were laying in bed, talking about cancer and how much we hate it, and our conversation took this turn:

ME: I'm so tired of waking up in the middle of the night to cry.
GH: You do that too? I thought I was the only one who did that.

So it was revealed that we cry during the night on the sly. I find that those late-night wake-ups are when the tears are most likely to come. I've got enough going on during the day--both simple distractions that need my attention and fun things that truly keep my mind off the sad stuff--that I find the tears rarely come during daylight. But if I wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00AM and my mind gets going, or if I just look over at GH and think about how much I love him, it's waterworks. But quiet waterworks as I never want to disturb his sleep; he needs all the sleep he can get.

Last night was one of those nights, but it was different in that it was the first one for which we were both awake. There wasn't much talking, just a lot of sniffling, eye-wiping, nose-blowing, and snuggling until we finally both dozed back off. I'd say we were awake for a good hour total, although GH said that he'd been tossing and turning for a while before that.

I sometimes think we don't do enough crying together, but the truth is that neither of us want to "waste" our time together crying. I know that it's not a waste of time, but we'd both rather focus on the happier things. That's not always realistic, but for now it's the way things work out for us.

We don't have any plans tonight and I'm glad. I think we need a little date night for the two of us. GH actually stayed home today for a mental health day and to get some much-needed sleep after last night. I'm going to meet him at home for lunch and suggest that we do something tonight for the two of us: dinner out, a movie, whatever. Just something to distract and pamper us the night before going back to chemo. Although I trust GH's oncologist to have a battle plan, we're sure to get some unwanted news about the cancer's progress, and I think an evening of pampering before that is in order.